. How had they found us? Isabel had told Uncle Tom that we might
stroll here; and Reverdy had prevailed upon Uncle Tom to drive this way.

In a few days there was to be a service at St. Peter's which Isabel was
eager to see. She was talking to Uncle Tom about it, begging him to go,
and he was half consenting though reluctant. Reverdy was all delight
over the prospect, and it was an opportunity for me to be with Isabel.
She had never become a communicant of any church. But she abhorred
atheism. It denied the love that she saw in nature, the divinity that
permeated the human mind; the law she sensed in growth and decay; the
spirit of beauty that reigned everywhere to her imagination. We were at
one on this matter of denying a God, but the repugnance that I had had
to imperial Catholicism had been increased by Serafino's recitals of
Italy's sufferings under the Church and Austria. And in Rome one saw the
settled dominance of clericalism. Perhaps the Church was like negro
slavery. If the Church ministered to beauty and spirituality, was it not
asserted in favor of slavery that it afforded leisure; did it not
correspond to the fertilization which enriches the roots of a gorgeous
flower? I could see Isabel turning to the esthetics in the Catholic
service. "What can you say," she asked, "against a faith that surrounds
itself with pictures, sculpture, music, incense, the rhythm of rich
Latin, the appeal in words to life renewal, eternal life, purity, glory,
tenderness? Say what you will of it; condemn its external sovereignty,
of guns and poison and machinations--condemn these as you will--its
ritual calls to purer dreams. And perhaps in all our life there must be
oppression and particular injustice in order to produce the finest
blossom."

Uncle Tom seemed to be falling into more frequent indisposition. He
often lay in bed for the greater part of the morning. There were days
when he did not leave his room. Again he would go forth to Canape's; and
while he was rarely in anything like a stagger, he was often saturated
with wine, heavy and sleepy from its influence. Isabel through it all
treated him with unfailing kindness; and some of our excursions were
interrupted because of Uncle Tom's taking to bed after returning from
Canape's; or because he could not arise before noon after an evening
with his friends. She would not desert his side. Was there something in
my presence with his life with Isabel, our friendship for each other